Elliott Leyton, an anthropologist who has studied youth crime, believes that the solution to youth crime “lies in the reduction of unemployment, the increase in social programs and the use of punishment rather than prison.” He expresses concern, however, about “the generation of vipers … already created, those juveniles and young adults, some on probation, who have little if any feeling for others and are perfectly willing to slaughter the innocent.” And, he asks, “Why is the entire system focused so heavily on the needs and rights of violent men and women?”
Leyton sums up what a smart society and justice system would do: “Radically improve social conditions and economic opportunities. Ruthlessly repress violence” (Blatchford 2009a; 2009b; 2009e; Seymour 2008; “Teen Sentenced as Adult in Michael Oatway Murder” 2009).
An Adult Sentence for
a “Puppet Master” Killer
On New Year’s Day, 2008, fourteen-year-old Stefanie Rengel opened the front door of her Toronto home and faced a killer. She was stabbed six times and bled to death shortly after in the arms of a stranger who saw her staggering along the sidewalk.
Within hours, police arrested a seventeen-year-old male (identified as D.B.) and a fifteen-year-old girl (identified as M.T.) and charged them with first-degree murder. (Their identities were protected under provisions of the YCJA.) D.B. was alleged to have been the person who attacked Rengel. M.T., though not alleged to have been at the scene of the crime, was alleged to have been the “mastermind” behind the killing.
At M.T.’s trial, the court heard that she was obsessively jealous of Rengel, whom she had never met but regarded as a rival. For over eight months, through conversations, text messages, Facebook ramblings, and Internet chats, she used sexual blackmail to pressure D.B. to kill Rengel.
The jury considered thousands of pages of text messages between M.T. and D.B., including conversations that apparently detailed their plans for the murder. M.T., in explicit terms, threatened to cut off sexual relations with D.B. unless he killed Rengel. She warned him that she would break off with him completely. In one message, she had told him: “I want her dead.… We’ve been through this.” Later, she added: “If it takes more than a week, then we’re jus gonna be friends.”
The Jury Decides
The jury watched two videotaped statements given by M.T. to police just hours after being arrested. In both, she seemed emotionless. She acknowledged that, though D.B. was more violent, she was the one more committed to Rengel’s death. She was asked by police, “He wouldn’t have thought of killing her had you not been so upset about what you perceived as her interference in your relationship, right?” She answered simply, “Yes.”
Prosecutors relied on a well-established legal principle: Counselling others to kill makes a person guilty of murder. On March 20, 2009, the jury found M.T. guilty of first-degree murder. It was then up to the judge to determine whether M.T. would be sentenced as a youth or an adult.
The Media’s Response
Following the jury’s decision, the Globe and Mail published the following editorial:
Sentencing a 15-year-old girl to an adult penalty, even for first-degree murder, is a major step for Canadian justice. The adult penalty is a mandatory life term. But it is the right step in the case of the Toronto girl known as M.T., convicted last week and awaiting sentence for her role in the stabbing death of 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel.
Canada’s courts tend to look assiduously, as they should, for any hope of rehabilitation in the young. But the adult penalty for those 17 and under has a special parole clause. At age 15, M.T. would be eligible for parole after five to seven years, at the trial judge’s discretion. This is a built-in form of leniency, a promise that those who deserve a chance at rehabilitation can get that chance while they are still young. It is not really an adult penalty, but a hybrid of the adult and youth penalties. And it fits these circumstances.
The killing of Stefanie Rengel was not a crime of passion, a “mistake” in judgment which might be blamed on youthful immaturity. Its cold-bloodedness chills the spine. For months, over countless emails, text messages and cellphone conversations, M.T. urged her 17-year-old boyfriend to kill Ms. Rengel, a girl she had never even met, on the apparent basis of a grudge she had developed against her. (The boyfriend is about to be tried for first-degree murder.) When he said he might be recognized, she told him to cut leotards and put them over his face. When the boy missed an earlier deadline for the killing, she withdrew sexual favours. When it was done, she re-enacted the killing with the boyfriend. Later, she protested to police that she and the boyfriend had talked of mundane things, in addition to the killing, as if that made her less of a killer.
None of this takes the onus off the boy who allegedly stabbed Ms. Rengel six times on New Year’s Day, 2008, leaving her to bleed to death in agony, with only a kind passerby to comfort her. But it does mean that M.T., who was nearly 16, is a serious threat to public safety.
Will that threat be diminished by the time six years is past, the maximum term in custody (followed by four years supervised in the community), if she is sentenced as a youth? Will she be safe to release? It’s impossible to predict at this point. No presentencing hearing has been held, and so it is not publicly known what sort of home life she has had, and what mental difficulties she might have experienced. But it is hard to see how her personal background would help the court predict the danger she poses. In these circumstances, the community’s protection should be paramount.
With a life penalty, M.T. would have to demonstrate to a parole board that she is an acceptable risk for release. Perhaps in five to seven years — let’s hope it’s at least six — she will not be ready. But perhaps in 10 or 12 she will be. Perhaps, too, she needs the threat of life behind bars to force her to deal with whatever made her wish to kill in cold blood. Who is helped by treating her as a youth? Not her. Not society.
A life penalty has three other benefits: She will have to report to parole authorities for life, rather than be unsupervised after 10 years; the crime will not be erased from her record (if she ever winds up in adult court again) if she is crime-free for five years after a youth sentence would end; and finally, the penalty will be commensurate with the terrible crime she committed. To steal a young teenage girl’s life from her for no other reason than some twisted self-gratification is monstrous, and requires a strong response that demonstrates the value this society puts on life (“Cold Blood and Adult Penalties” 2009).
The Judge’s Decision
On July 28, 2009, after a three-week jury trial and a one-week sentencing hearing in which two psychiatrists testified about their examinations of her, M.T. was sentenced by Justice Ian Nordheimer as an adult for manipulating her boyfriend into killing Stefanie Rengel. She lost her anonymity and was identified as Melissa Tordorovic.
Psychiatrists indicated that Todorovic’s personality would not be fully developed until she was in her mid-twenties. Until then, they were reluctant to make a diagnosis. And, absent a diagnosis, let alone treatment, her future dangerousness was unknowable and unpredictable. The judge said that the sum of psychiatric evidence was that there was “some risk of a repetition of this conduct. While the precise degree of risk is unknown, the nature and extent of Melissa’s role in this incident is cause for concern.”
Justice Nordheimer said that “the puppet master is more culpable than the puppet.”
The Sentencing of D.B.
On September 17, 2009, Stefanie Rengel’s actual killer was sentenced. The youth had pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in April 2009.
D.B. was four days short of his eighteenth birthday when he stabbed Rengel on January 1, 2008. The timing was crucial. An adult committing the same crime would receive an automatic life sentence with no parole for twenty-five years. “He bought himself 15 years right off the top,” noted crown attorney Robin Flumerfelt, who emphasized the planning that had gone into the murder. “This had been planned and deliberated for months,” said Flumerfelt. “It was not